Agile for Humanity 2023 Conference, Saturday February 25, 2023. Black History Month. Educators Dr. Charles Collingwood, Blais Cross, and Rene Martinez describes the challenges in educating tomorrow's leaders.

In order to be an effective coach, it is important to maintain and sharpen your core tool, you.  This means attending to every aspect of you including mental health. Practicing good mental hygiene through self-awareness and intentional care is one way to maintain an agile mind.  There are no set rules for practicing self-care, but it is important to establish some markers for how you continue to nurture your relationship with self.  Unfortunately, many of us don’t recognize this need.  We simply jump from event to event or engagement to engagement without ensuring we are whole, present, and charged.  This despite one of the essential values of Agility being, ‘maintaining a sustainable pace’.  It doesn’t just apply to the teams we are coaching, but for the coach as well.

Devon and Lizzy Morris Keynote - The legacy is bigger than the pain at the Agile for Humanity 2023 conference.

For years we’ve known that Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) were necessary values to embrace if we wanted our organizations to thrive. Recently, belonging—the sense of being seen, heard, and valued—was added. But we will never be entirely successful in building a culture of belonging without also addressing Healing: the antidote to trauma that creates lasting freedom and resilience. DEIBH is the new acrostic.

DEIBH is generative in every sense of the word. We know that a culture of inclusion and belonging is good for business, that it creates value. Fully embracing the values of DEIBH, with the critical addition of healing, delivers three-fold value. Employees know that they belong, that they are valued as individuals, and that their work and contributions are of value. Happy contributing people translates into loyal customers satisfied by the value of the goods and services you provide. With these two in place, the value of the business as a whole will grow and thrive.  In 2020, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company released a report on the business benefits of DEI. They found that companies in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in management were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean.

Business Leaders Need to Explicitly Incorporate Belonging and Bealing

Business leaders need to explicitly incorporate belonging and healing into their strategic goals. When business leaders look down the road and decide where they would like to be in six months or a year, they can also usually identify obstacles that might prevent them from getting there. Invariably, some of these obstacles have to do with culture and team cohesion. Business leaders can take the following actions to arrive at healing outcomes:

* Create an environment that supports a belonging and generative culture.

* Use the principles of ubuntu that enable community, integrity, and honesty—the spirit of togetherness.

* Increase the language of compassion to be present for employees.

* Support self-organizing groups for meditation and self-help to explore thoughts and feelings within the individual headspace and organization.

* Measure to obtain validated learnings to decide whether to pivot or stay with the healing strategic initiative.

Dr. Dave Cornelius presents "Cocka- doodle-doo, gotta make a move. Belonging and Healing in 2023" at the Agile for Humanity 2023 bi-monthly meetup. We are continuing the series “Resiliently You” to discover what makes people resilient to build high-performing organizations and sense belonging and healing. We are streaming from the Agile for Humanity January 2023 virtual meetup. The topic is creating Your 2023 Visioning Journey Map. I invite you to visit the www.AgileFORHumanity.org website to experience creating Your 2023 Visioning Journey Map.

(mellow music)

♪ Let's talk about it ♪

♪ Talk, talk, talk ♪

♪ Let's go deep ♪

♪ We all have something to share ♪

♪ Knolshare with Dr. Dave ♪

(rooster crowing)

(audience clapping)

- Hello and welcome to the

Knolshare With Dr. Dave Podcast. I am Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host.

We are continuing the series, "Resiliently You," to discover what makes people resilient to build high-performing organizations and sense belonging and healing.

We're streaming from the Agile for Humanity January 2023 virtual meetup. The topic today is creating Your 2023 Visioning Journey Map.

I invite you to visit the Agile for Humanity website to experience creating your 2023 Visioning Journey Map. That's www.AgileF-O-RHumanity.org.

Okay, awesome.

So, you know, where we're

gonna kick off today is this...

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We're gonna kick off by

just doing a check-in.

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This comes from, and I don't

know why I'm spacing on this,

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but core protocols.

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This is one of the core protocols

called check-in, checkout.

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And I like using this

format because it's fun

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and it's simple and it's

easy for people to follow.

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So why don't we go and, we're agilists

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so just whoever wants

to go first, go first,

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and then the first person then popcorns

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and calls someone else

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and then down the line like that.

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So who wants to start?

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- Oh, I can go first.

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- [Dr. Dave] There you go.

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- So yeah, checking in.

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My name is Adrian Terry.

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One thing I'm grateful for is

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another opportunity to learn

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how I can make a difference.

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And why?

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That's just really important to me

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to know that I am making an

impact, even if it's small.

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That's just really important to me.

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And then I am in--

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- And then everyone else

gets to say, welcome.

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- Welcome.

48

Welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast.  I am Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host.  We are continuing the series “Resiliently You” to discover what makes people resilient to build resilient organizations and sense belonging and healing.

My guest today is Adrian Terry.

 

Please provide an elevator pitch about your journey as a leader for the IT transformation.

I've served in several delivery roles within the project management discipline. I often wondered, “What is the rationale for a given effort?”  I would lose sight on the WHY for the initiative not realizing that many of these efforts were needed to help transform the organization. My career now has me placed closer to the decision-making strategy table where I can help drive transformation.

How would you define resilience in context of leading an IT transformation?

Transformation is the vehicle for achieving greater resiliency. The two main avenues are (1) to transform because leaders have a vision for creating new/improving existing capabilities that provide greater value to customers, or (2) transforming because of low operational performance and losses in revenue. The first scenario is preferred over the latter. The visionary attitude for transformation has a theology that drives a more pre-emptive attitude for change as opposed to reacting to things like losing market share to the competition.

 

Why is resilience an important skill to cultivate in a world that is filled with Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA)?

To be more resilient means to incorporate operating routines that are more gymnastic than traditional ways of working. While the usual tenets are to reduce operating costs, increase revenues, and improve margins…the ultimate goal with resiliency is to improve stability by helping the organization become more elastic. When this is done using a flexible strategic planning model and tools like horizon planning, the org is equipped to address the four elements of VUCA.

 

What makes you resilient?

An ongoing quest to understand what I DON’T know so I can make plans to learn it. I have a genuine fear of being ignorant. I want to know what I’m supposed to know. My passion for learning has distinguished me from my pears; I love the idea of Lean Agile Leadership which provides the value proposition for a growth mindset over a fixed mindset.

 

How do you deliver value through the IT transformation? In answering this question, can you provide a definition of what it means to deliver value?

By recognizing there will always be the next new technology and way of working, the IT transformation can serve as the tip of the spear for those initiatives that accelerate the adoption of these themes. Value through the transformation is seen in the development of UVPs, MVLs, MVPs, and other Opportunity Assessment type exercises. The transformation may not own efforts long-term but can help drive the evaluation of opportunities to determine which opportunities are best-fit/right-fit for the organization. A good example is an organization’s interviewing process. The transformation took on the idea of Panel Interviews to improve the speed for onboarding new talent. Value has realized on behalf of the hiring managers and the employees.

 

What are some tangible benefits gained by organizations via the IT transformation?

In addition to the realized value from the transformation initiatives, Knowledge Management is improved because of the frequency and volume of discoveries. To realize this benefit, a transformation team needs to be sourced from a good cross-section of the organiza...

Dr. Dave  00:07

We all have some notion today. What is the importance of belonging? A why do we all need to belong somewhere, it is built into human nature. Learn how the powerful philosophy of Ubuntu helps to deliver a simple roadmap to building positive teams and relationships, improving engagement and performance. Get your copy of belonging and healing, creating awesomeness for yourself and others by Dr. Dave Cornelius on amazon.com

Dr. Dave 

Hello, and welcome to the Dr. Dave. I am document familiar with your hosts. We are continuing the series resiliently you to discover what makes people resilient to build resilient organization and sense belonging and healing. My guest today is Allison Pollard is one a good friend, someone that I enjoy speaking with. And she's on this new journey. And I can't wait wait to learn more. So welcome, Allison.

Allison  01:12

Yeah. Thank you.

 

Dr. Dave  01:15

Yeah, that's it. Nothing more.

 

Allison  01:21

I still don't remember exactly when we met. I want to say it was the Agile gathering West. Many years ago. That was probably like the first place that we we came together, but I could be wrong on that.

 

Dr. Dave  01:35

No, you're completely right. We were at that camp in Southern California. Old Boy Scout camp. Right. And we had this agile. Yeah, yes. That's where we met. Yes, it's been a long time ago.

 

Allison  01:54

Yeah. Nothing like an open space event with a bunch of analysts at a Boy Scout camp.

 

Dr. Dave  02:03

Yeah, remember the times we were you know, we would go outside and around the bonfire and marshmallows and s'mores and yeah, yeah. That was us. For sure, for sure. So I want an elevator pitch about your journey as a leader in the Agile community. You know, give me what give us one adult so my people could know who you are. Our people?

 

Allison  02:30

Yeah, I know, right? Well, I'm Alison Pollard. I'm a coach, consultant, and trainer, working with helping improve. I'm actually their newest business partner. I'm one of three co owners. So I'm very excited about that. My agile journey, I just fell in love with agile, I had come from project management, I love technology, I was always looking at how could I make things better? For our customers? How can I make things better for the developers? How could I make things better for myself, and agile seemed like a way of really being able to live into that, you know, learning about these different practices, you know, learning about Lean after that, and some of the principles there. Just getting exposed to a larger community, I think was such a big impact in my career, of how can I then, like, make use of that and then continue to pay it forward. We're all on a journey. We're all looking at how we can make things better. And I think by being in relationships with one another and sharing ideas and challenging each other, we can come up with ways to make things better than we could individually by ourselves.

 

Dr. Dave  03:52

Well said, so now you're under a new adventure, you know, after working for many years, but the same company, everyone, you, Alison, because she works for improving, worked for improved in the past. Tell us about this new plan journey.

 

Allison  04:09

Yeah, yeah, this is. This is yeah, you're right. Like, I'm like, oh, yeah, a long time, like I was with improving for about 11 years. 11 years is unheard of. I think in our industry, no one stays at companies for nearly that long. And it was, it was such an incredible year, you know,

Organizational Change is an Individual Choice - Balancing individual and collective needs as our organizations evolve.

Organizational Change is an Individual Choice - Balancing individual and collective needs as our organizations evolve.

It is no longer enough to make it through the next reorganization, growth challenge, or market shift. Rather, we must choose to find a way to belong amongst the heaving rates of change we constantly find ourselves in for our own wellbeing. We are called instead to master the change process itself. We are called, over and over, to deepen our understanding of the value we might create together. And in that understanding, make commitments that are both public and also deeply personal. These commitments can be at odds with our personal goals and ambitions. The question then becomes: “how might we co-create an organization that fulfills its purpose AND enables us to fulfill our own?”

Enterprise coach Kevin Callahan will explore this question and invite listeners to join him. They can expect to leave the talk with their own questions to explore individually and together.

Book AD: Belonging and Healing: Creating Awesomeness for Yourself and Others

What is the importance of belonging and why do we all need to belong somewhere? It is built into our human nature. Learn how the powerful philosophy of Ubuntu helps to deliver a simple roadmap to building positive teams and relationships, improving engagement and performance. Get your copy of Belonging and Healing: Creating Awesomeness for Yourself and Others by Dr. Dave Cornelius on amazon.com.

 

Dr. Dave:

Welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast. I'm Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. We're continuing the series Resiliently You to discover what makes people resilient to build resilient organizations and sense belonging and healing. My guest today is Lorienne Nseka, Corporate Private Attorney at Scaled Agile Inc. So hey Lorienne, welcome and let's just get started with an elevator pitch and talk about your superpower a bit.

Lorienne:

My name is Lorienne Nseka, most people call me Lo. I'm a Corporate Attorney at Scaled Agile. I specialize in privacy and copyright law for SAI. We handle a wide range of contractual, or I handle a wide range of contractual transactions for them. SAI is a business agility consulting service provider and we help companies to become more confident in responding to the ever-changing economic market to scale their transformation while sustaining outcomes. And most importantly, we help companies empower their employees.

I think being a lawyer is a superpower in itself. Our job is to think critically and we're taught to question everything, cross examine everyone, people you're dating, your family, your friends, and we're taught discipline with how law school is structured and how hard it is. So we gain the ability to break down any problem, examine it, and put it all back together again. And that's not something that everyone could do.

And my personal power is my drive and my determination. I'm an extremely motivated individual. When I commit to something, I'm set and I'm determined to succeed. And my motivation enhances my capability of thinking, it helps me generate ideas and I'm always thinking and trying to find new creative ways to reach my goals. So, given my life journey, which is a subject for another podcast, I would not be where I am today without my superpower of motivation and drive.

Dr. Dave:

So how do you define resilient people?

Lorienne:

Resilient people. I'm going to start this off with a story. My father was born in a small village in the Democratic Republic of Congo. His mom was blind his whole life and both of his parents died at a very young age, or when my dad was at a very young age. So he grew up as a poor orphan in a third world country. And before my dad retired, he just retired last year, he was a aerospace expert consultant for all of Central Africa. He's helped his siblings move his family to America. He's brought, obviously me and my whole siblings here. He's helped my mom move her whole family to the US, and that's a big deal for people that are from a third world country.

My dad's very, he's a successful man, but his most proud accomplishment is the fact that he takes care of orphans, helping them see that there's hope and that bad things do happen to us in this world, but there is people out there that care and if you keep pushing for your goals, you will accomplish great things. And I say all this to say that I define resilient people as people who are able to adapt and do better than the traumatizing situation that they've been through. And not only that, but they have the capability of reaching back and helping people in the same or similar situations to realize that they too could make it.